India’s new dawn
by
AJ Philip |
Hazare’s fast has become a game changer in political discourse
A visitor to India during the last fortnight would have been amazed by the kind of influence a diminutive, septuagenarian Gandhian from Maharashtra wielded on the people, particularly the educated middle class youth. He or she would have in all probability concurred with the slogan, “Anna is India, India is Anna”, distasteful in ordinary circumstances.
For a fortnight, the lead story in every newspaper in the country was about Anna Hazare’s fast, while 24x7 news channels devoted almost wholly to report and discuss what was called the “people’s agitation”. It is a measure of his clout that Parliament met on August 27 — a holiday — to discuss his demand and make a solemn promise to bring forward a law that would address all his concerns. It was this resolution that facilitated his decision to call off the fast on August 28.
One reason why Hazare received such massive support was that he chose corruption, an issue that appealed to an overwhelming majority of the people who are fed up with the menace. The political class is primarily to blame for the loss of its credibility, as it has been ambivalent, if not double-faced, on the issue of corruption.
Every successive Indian government had promised a powerful Lok Pal, an Ombudsman-like institution, but only to go back on its word. As a result, two generations of Indians have grown up hearing about the elusive body that was envisaged to send the corrupt to jail.
So when Hazare, a former truck driver in the Indian Army, who transformed an irrigation-deficit Ralegaon-Sidhi in Maharashtra into a self-sufficient, model village, took up the cause of Lok Pal, it struck a sympathetic chord among the people cutting across all divides.
The 2G Spectrum scam in which the national exchequer is believed to have lost revenue to the tune of $35 billion was the proverbial last straw on the camel’s back. And when the government appeared to drag its feet on ferretting out the billions stashed away by Indians in Swiss and other foreign banks, even when it had the names of some such account-holders, his campaign got a shot in the arm.
It is considered a crowning shame that India, which has global ambitions and eyes a permanent seat in the UN Security Council, is the 85th least corrupt nation, according to Transparency International. These none-too-pleasing factors helped Hazare to capture the imagination of the masses. They poured on to the streets to protest against his arrest soon after he began his fast on August 16.
For once the all-powerful government realised that an arrested Hazare was deadlier than a free Hazare forcing it to release him forthwith. The ill-advised arrest, in fact, made him more popular. Of course, those who supported the government accused him of resorting to blackmail, a charge against all those who go on hunger strike.
British administrator Lord Linlithgow had once written to Mahatma Gandhi: “I regard the use of fast for political purposes as a form of political blackmail (himsa) for which there can be no moral justification”. Those of his ilk thought it was a form of coercion. But for Gandhi, it was part and parcel of his philosophy of truth and non-violence.
True, Anna is not a latter-day Gandhi but he commanded respect because everyone knew that he had no personal axe to grind when he began his fast. There are many who see in Hazare’s Jan Lok Pal Bill a draconian piece of legislation, which would not stand judicial scrutiny, given the doctrine of the basic structure of the Constitution the Supreme Court had propounded in the Kesavananda Bharati case.
One will have to wait for a couple of months to know what kind of a Bill the government would bring forward. However, to assume that it would end corruption, a bit dramatically, is to be simplistic. Corruption is not confined to the government alone, as the corporates, the media and the non-government organisations (NGOs) are all steeped in it.
In other words, the Lok Pal can only be a beginning. There have to be systems in place to tackle corruption at all levels, including the highest judiciary. One good thing that has happened is that the people are no longer reluctant to discuss corruption. In fact, today the issue of corruption dominates the people’s psyche.
Equally important, elected representative of the people have, for the first time, realised that they cannot remain oblivious of the feelings of the people. In many respects, Anna Hazare’s fast marked a paradigm shift in the national political discourse.
Oman Tribune |
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